The outcome for the 26 weeks ended to Oct. 27 compared to a profit of 54 million pounds in the same period last year.

The group, which issued a huge profit warning in May, said it made a headline pretax profit of 50 million pounds - ahead of analysts’ average forecast of 45 million pounds but down from 73 million pounds last time. ($1 = 0.7857 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)